Page:Tamil studies.djvu/149

122 in the Hebrew Bible, and arisi (rice) in Greek. Like the Banyas or the Aryan merchant caste of Upper India, the Tamils had no caste scruples prohibiting them from sea-voyage. In fact, among the Dravidians of the remote past there was no caste system, and they were expert seamen.

Although the Tamilians owed their grammar to Agastya and to Tolkapyar, it should not be inferred that they were indebted to them for the art of writing also. The existence of pure Tamil words like ezhuttu (letters), suvadi (book) &c, before they came to the south disproves the theory that Agastya brought the alphabet with him from Upper India. The gratuitous assertion of Dr. Caldwell that 'the language of the Tamilians was committed to writing on or soon after the arrival of the first colony of Brahmans', therefore, falls to the ground.

Again, his statement that the Dravidian alphabet makes no difference between the long and short e, எ and o, ஒ is a mere specious argument, if by Dravidian he meant Tamil, because the Vatteluttu alphabet of the early Tamils did make the distinction, as the author of the Tolkapyam has distinctly ruled that,-எகரவொகர மெய்ப்புள்ளி பெறும் ; and this sutram will have no meaning if no such distinction was observed in his days.

While writing about the formation of the letter m, ம the grammarian, Tolkapyar clearly defines that, உட்பெறுபுள்ளியுருவாகும்மே. What he meant by this rule was that the form of p, ப (Vatteluttu ) should be